It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people’s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition.
Wander, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other’s company, the foreigners and the friends who found them now plumb the heart of the New Wild, pursuing towards Herdetopp the forces that stole Wander's childhood and feast now upon The Land of Rulers.
-
The night in Goal passed by with speed. Wander and Fragile could not see it, as they were together asleep.
The Bell could see, because of the kind she was, with no eyes for its light or lack. She could see then how the night was soon eroded, and tremored at the day.
“You poor and flimsy dancer,” she whispered. “Will you show me what she needs? Will you remit what you are owed?”
Am could not speak, so he did not. The dim and the bright poured in to Wander’s face. This Wild was thin of wings to greet her, and its clear patches of needles and rising waves of dirt and sand spoke to no preference for the dark’s exit.
Their fire had kept up the whole night, and as her eyes broke open Wander saw its fairy trail of smoke gushing back up through the branches of the thicktree they had sheltered under. The stronghoof dozed, its tail flicking the ground, and the black rope of The Bell curled tight around its neck. A bulky shadow massing just prior to the distance was formed by the dawn; rays of sunlight gave out its vis of rolling satin. Fragile was nestled in his night bag, clutching his three-string. He shivered, but did not appear to have moved otherwise.
“What did you see, Joyous One?” The Bell cried at Wander. She unbound herself from the stronghoof and swam to her, curling and twisting and tumbling over snow. “Look at all this new!”
Wander did not respond. She sat for a while as the sun rose further, casting sight across the woodfold and peaked white hills in a pale hiss of the visible, frothing mist. She took her pipe out from her vest and stuffed its bowl with resin, then smoked by the slopes, blowing fire into them.
The Bell followed her and climbed on her shoulders as she surveilled the Wild. “Your kind would seek a word for this.”
Wander puffed. “What word?”
“One to make it smile. None can, but they would try. I believe she would be glad that you are here.”
“She would approve of my company.”
The Bell curled around her shoulders.
After her supply became exhausted, Wander collected an armload of fabric and stoppered bottles from the stronghoof, slid on her hard leather gloves, and knelt down next to Fragile. She shook his shoulder and said his name.
He recoiled from her and his eyes snapped to life. They gave way to watery gaps that expelled as he gasped.
“The sun is up,” Wander said. She squatted down and began assembling her tools on a rough sheet. “Show me your cuts.”
“My- my cuts?”
“On your legs. I’m going to cover them.”
After he was wincingly extracted from the bag, she made to pull off his breeches. This revealed the patches given Fragile by the movers who had abducted him. They had since decayed and become torn by his additional riding and time in the rounds, and were reduced to little more than moist tatters clinging to plots of water and slick. The Bell poked at them, and Wander gently guided her away.
“Did you do this?” she asked, picking a lingering speck out from a mound on his inner thigh.
He shook his head. “It was done well,” she said. “You’re free of bad waters. They’ll fix.”
Wander rubbed drops of clear liquid into the spots where his skin had stripped. She tied cloth over each of them, smoothing a paste into the fabric before turning it on him. Between these remedies, she felt Fragile grow very warm. His pulse was jittery, and his face was red, but he did not appear troubled.
She finished her work. Then the morning began; she went out and dragged in a roothead from the rounds. A fire was set, where she chopped off a section of its flank, and from its meat refined a broth that she poured into a bowl and set by Fragile’s night bag. For his part, Fragile washed her different colored sets of hair, cleansed her weapons, and fed The Stronghoof.
He approached The Stonehoof in the rounds, who had not yet woken, once The Stronghoof was finished. The Stonehoof had set itself in a bed of grass and it stood itself up when it heard Fragile approach, screaming and fumbling backwards. Wander turned her head up at the noise as her blade was hide-deep in the roothead.
“I-it’s okay,” Fragile stammered, making himself smaller. He held up the sack of feed.
The Stonehoof’s breath clouded and obscured its face. In the rolling orchestra of tendons which hoofs moved, it stepped towards Fragile. He held up the bag and it dipped down its mouth and nibbled at it.
After squeezing, dismembering, and skinning the roothead, Wander sat down by the fire and took a whole haunch of it and chomped. Her teeth tore neatly through flesh and bone and ground them up in equal measure.
Fragile sat beside her. He picked at the bowl she had prepared for him. It was some time before he felt her staring, and he looked up at her.
“You’re eating,” she said.
He became uneasy. “I- I didn’t- should I not be?”
“No,” she said. “You should. But what has changed?”
She looked at the risen sun. He gazed at it, tensed, and gave a stuttering, choppy exhale. He turned from the Ruler’s glare and gripped the shoulder of his over. “I don’t know. I’m… I’m really hungry.”
Wander looked into his eyes and took a chomping bite. “Zet,” she said.
“’Zet’?”
“It’s what a Shamin says. When she eats. It means, ‘cook’.”
Fragile shifted, and he swallowed in a hunk of food. “’Seh,’” he munched out.
She turned down the corners of her mouth.
-
Wander extracted the guide from its place in The Stronghoof’s saddlebags. She also took out a second document, bound in a red wooden tube, which she opened to reveal a sheet of inked, woven fibres. She rolled it all out over a leather mat on the snow-soaked grass, in an open spot a few metres from their camp where the canopy gave way to the open air. She looked at it all and craned her neck at the sky, making marks on it with an ashy piece of wood as she did so.
As Fragile emptied his dish and replaced it in her bags, he peeked at the odd display. He turned his head when she addressed his gaze.
“You should come,” she said. He looked up and she waved him over. “Come. I will show you.”
He set aside the dish and sat down by her on all fours. She had fixed their position on the guide with the ash, displaying them in the heart of a great white blot. The body of it was filled with points heavily annotated by Rootcliff ideograms.
“This is supposed to be the place we are,” she said. She swirled a finger around her mark. She traced the ash through a series of points. “And this is supposed to be our path.” She lifted her marker off the guide and planted it in her vest. “I don’t know what way De will seek through the Wild. But I would use this one.”
Fragile’s brow dipped at the indistinct mass which represented the landscape. “Where are the trees?” he asked. “The hills?”
“They are changing too much now,” she said. “The trees, and the hills, and the marked paths too. So they are not written.” She tapped the second guide. “That’s why I have this.”
Fragile pored over the new document. It was divided between a pair of broad, curved shapes, with an orb at the center surrounded by barbed points. “Is this also our place?”
“It is the sky.”
“The sky!” He looked closer at its nodes. Paths had been shot between some of them, adjoined to symbols imitating vicious faces, and these were ordered into a great tree sitting beside the linework.
Wander made another mark on the guide. There are places in the riversland where there is only water,” she said. “They’re a little like this one. They make those for people on the water, so that they can find their way.”
Fragile looked at the shapes in wonder, and at the faces. One of them, with long teeth and horns, was frozen in a roar. He turned up and looked for it.
-
Wander cut apart and packed up the roothead. Fragile set aside a meal for the rulers; he took a handful of squares extracted from the stew and opened up a hole in the soil. As his hand cupped the dirt and made to brush it over, it stuttered and he held back. He bit his lip. One square, thicker and cut more flatly than the rest, was taken back from the pile. He took another, and the rulers took the rest when he scrabbled over heaps of dust and a patch of chilly snow into the grave. He chipped words into their spot with his littlecane.
The Stronghoof opened its eyes and blinked. It lifted itself up, along with Wander’s possessions, and with a groaning lurch mustered itself to her side. She kicked dirt over the fire, brushed back the stronghoof’s hair, and led it past the slick trunks of the wingtrees where they settled. Their feet acceded to the rounds, which fell into them again.
Wander and Fragile set into the brush, following the fickle trail that had led them together. With the trees and half-sprout flowers, Fragile’s throat burned and the sun tricked him into sweating as the day began. Wander could feel the beads of water break out on his forehead as her own heat washed through him. Their hooved friends crunched through the bushes, beside and behind, and the Bell entwined Wander’s shoulders. Through the green and white, they flooded the country. The Stonehoof that watched from the shadows.
“You have a way with hearts,” Wander told Fragile.
“I do?”
She turned her head at the rumbling silhouette trailing them through the brush. “Your cannotfollow. You have grabbed it.”
Fragile peered into the darkness of the dry and sapspit branches, where its eyes gleamed back at him. “She is kind,” he said. “I wonder why she stayed.”
“You have grabbed it,” The Bell suggested.
They crossed through thick patches of shrub. Fragile’s eyes ballooned at the green ray of those rounds, which retained some pastel flourish even past the warmfront and which was being taken out by the cold. The ground shifted in waves from point to point, rolling down when they thought it right to step up, humming around them as they reached over the crests. They passed crops of thicktrees and wingtrees, whose forted basings and twin branches split out into swirling and wicked cages far removed from the sight of their Eastern kin, and found a new type had begun to pick among the lots of their wandering path. This kind stood shorter than the others, and as low as Fragile; at the end of its branches hung a weighted globe that tilted and spun as they went by, letting out a glow and reaching toward them. They reached out the most toward Wander.
“It is all so full of light,” Fragile said, his voice a whisper he had not aimed for. “I have never seen this.”
“These are Shines,” Wander said. “We are through the thick of cold now. Warmth comes, and they will shine more brightly.”
Fragile drank his fill of it. When it was all more regular, he opened his hoofleather bag and fiddled with the clay statuette he had received from Willow in Withoutwind.
“What is it you wish?” Wander asked.
He looked up at her. “Wish?”
“When you ready yourself to speak,” she said, “you rub something, and your brow tilts. You have a new question.”
Fragile blushed. “How would you-”
“You have asked many of them.”
“It is about you,” he said. He struggled to keep from flustering.
“Yes?”
“I mean- about you,” he said. He put his fingers together. “-about your beginning-”
“You can have it.”
“The mark on your neck,” he said. “Is it something a Larun gives?” He clung to the figure.
She paused before answering. “It is.”
Fragile looked down. A moment later, he asked, “Is it something the cane-player gave you?”
“He knew a man once. That one hit me, and it was something I got from him.”
Fragile was distraught. “Has he done it to everyone who is taken?”
“No. The all of them is big. Bigger than the one.”
Fragile waited further. “I have been wondering- since Eighty.”
Wander turned to him and tilted her head.
“What is its good?” he asked.
She looked up from him, forward. “‘Its good.’”
“The taking- The good they see. Or- what is done with it? It is a burden. Who would make it?”
“Work is done,” she said. “They take some for it- to work houses, and work children. Others work paths, and block-buildings. Others work battles. Little ones work the childhood of Laruns, and become them. It is our hands they want, and their movement.”
“...I cannot hear it.”
Wander waited, but he said nothing else. “Which part?”
“What good is the work? The fight?”
Wander’s eyes did not move.
“H-how much have they built?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Wander?” He stopped, and she did too, but she did not meet his gaze.
“H-how-” His face would accuse her and wring the words from her mouth, so she continued to look away from him. “I mean, h-how- how many- where does this crying end?”
“I do not want to say,” she said.
“Why not?”
“There has been no count,” she said. “There is not much to do with what we know. I believe it would just upset you.”
He bit his lip. “What did they do to your country?” he asked. “What is it like now?”
“My country is gone.”
The wings chirped.
“They call it Harmony,” she said. “It is a word like ‘peace’.”
A high-pitched noise came out from somewhere in the forest. A body had produced it. It was cracking and splitting lungs and a throat, forced past the stomach. When it dried up, another scream took its place.
Fragile’s figure snapped to it and Wander turned.
The sun shined down on them, but it was no longer hot. The air had coolled past the cold of winter, and Fragile’s mouth pumped out clouds. The branches moved and wrapped around them, turning out the stars until there was nothing left.
Wander took stock of the action, and it crushed them. She pulled Fragile into her embrace, that he might warm. A crimson, snuffling mass fell in behind them and pressed its head against them.
The screaming went down as the light exited, and ceased. Another voice began to sing in Goalish, lilting and tripped.
Fragile held his hands to his eyes, and his knees shook. He retched. There was darkness.
-
The weight of struck bolts and sweat. The jilting of miracles pressed in to their position, no matter how far they moved. As they walked, Wander did look to find somewhere else. It was before or after herself. It was in the greens and whites of the country. It is all some sacred other. It is untouchable but now and still vanishing. There are few who hate it so much. They hate more the ones that cry. The missile and the rattling chain had found her. There were places and noises in the wood where something does not know it. Fragile had long hoped to go and join them. The country is vanishing, and it is not untouchable. Wander felt that it would push them out. She felt that it would be gone forever. But she still searched for some other place.
The ground began to settle and the trees grew ordinary. Rays of light fell through the branches again. She guided them until the darkness was forgotten.
As they walked, nasal tones and chatter itched at Wander’s ears. She stopped.
“Who is out there?” she asked the Bell out loud.
“Many breathers,” the Bell replied. “But I do not know what is in them. They seem too easy.”
Wander half-turned her head to Fragile. “Remember what we talked about.”
He nodded and clutched his statuette. Wander extracted her shortblade and let it dangle at her side as they advanced.
They passed into the wood further. It confronted them with a clearing sliced up by water. Thick trenches of mud and ice dug in to the soil and surrounded fires, which hummed all along the edges and narrow pathways into the bayed gulf. Great numbers of carts and peopled figures were scattered about it, along with thatched dwellings. Wander and Fragile watched as shadows in the North, and eyes struck upon them; a Larun went out from a group of his kin nearby, who were laughing and chattering as they cut wood. Neither he nor they carried weapons.
“From who have you come?” the stranger asked. “And where are you going?” His voice was light and nourished the ear.
Wander brought out the cloth insignia from her vest and displayed it. “What tell has put you here?” she asked.
He smiled. “There is no tell for it,” he said. “This is our place, Blade.” He reached out and swept back his arm. “It is a good one.”
Wander looked at it. “Where is your kontor?” she asked.
“He is in the woods, catching food.” The Larun extended his arms; they moved to the wrist of Wander’s blade-hand, which did not move as he shook it. “My name is Huksa,” he said. “If you wish to eat, I will bring you to our friend. He had plenty for us. I’m sure he will have it for you.”
When Huksa began to head toward the settlement, Wander did not follow. He turned. “You will not be taken, friends,” he said. “We are busy. There is much to see.”
He continued and did not call out again. The sun was drawing low and casting a crowd of shadows on them, flung past the thicktrees up a wood further up the settlement.
“Should we go around?” Fragile asked.
Wander prodded the Bell. “What do you see?” she asked.
The Bell slithered down from around her shoulders and went before them. She twisted and snapped the ends of her rope twice before she spoke again. “I wish we would go in there,” she said.
Wander held on to her. “Why?”
She shivered and twitched. “It is familiar,” she said. “And clear.”
Fragile watched as Wander rubbed her weapon’s hilt with her thumb. She put her short blade back into its sheath.
“We’ll go look,” she told Fragile.
He nodded hurriedly, and went along with Huksa’s retreat.
-
The space was plenty with drifted and overturned carts, many half-submerged in the scars of drench and muck that surrounded their encampment. The contents of sacks and boxes and barrels brimming with seeds, tubed plants and jars of unguents were disbursed and cracked open. Leaning shelters had been built from branchlogges for the gang of nivmen and others who accompanied them. Many had erected circles of stones and poles marked with gold, trailing dye ribbons that shined orange and red and sapphire.
The unarmed workers walked along chiefly Larun fighters. These did not wear the ashy gray brysts of the Otiser’s ranks; instead, they sported an eclectic array of armors and armaments. There was among their host a great touching and hugging and grabbing and giving of hands. There was laying together and laughing, and they had taken off their shoes and dipped their feet in the reaves of water that swirled all around. White nubs picked up from their banks.
The inhabitants of the camp, although happy, stumbled around aimlessly when they were not in drink or each other. Their bodies and faces were grimed, and many of them did not speak, instead looking around in confusion. One stared at a broken cart, blinking and rubbing his eyes. A group of them looked at a pile of discarded metal blades in wonder.
Wander’s gaze was soon caught by a thin, wriggling worm or serpent which swam along nearby and collected a jug of water from a group of lounging nivmen. It did so with a hand and ten fingers, and it was not alone, increasing in like as they moved forward. The camp and well beyond was crisscrossed with the activities and collection of the hands, digging up masses of dirt, caressing smiling nivmen as they passed, brushing through stacks of crates and shaking out their contents for others to sweep away. Fragile and Wander were forced to leap over them; Huksa walked on and over them without a second thought. Fragile squeaked and jumped at Wander as he goggled one he was stepping around that snapped out underneath him, pointing up as it retreated to the center of the settlement.
The jewelleried fashion of the unarmed workers, those beside the nivmen, was transformative, and fully plated brow and cheeks in blue and silver metal. They were something in the eye of Fragile that enlarged it. “Wander,” he whispered, “what are they called?”
She found where he was looking. “Speakparts,” she said. “They go from place to place, bringing things and searching Larun-gifts.”
Huksa glanced at her when she spoke the sellers’ name. “Speakparts they were, once,” he said, “and ours was their keeping. But the search is ended, as is their call, and so is ours. Come.”
They followed the path of hands, which brought them in view of foundations rising from the ground, addressed with a wild of their makings. It was uninhabited by the other nivmen, who walked through and past it without interest. Within the founding was a creature, whose body appeared much like a breather’s. It swirled with the arms, which protruded from its back chest and torso. They reached without limit, concentrated there into a web of industry across the whole complex, stacking wood, tying fixtures, setting fire, and knapping stone in the production of cushions, walls, roofs, and a bed of hard soil. The three maneuvered past its facility and their body stood up from where it knelt, spreading paste over a bed of smooth stones. It turned, revealing its face as consistent of a shimmering blue eye, which was itself set in the center of a bulbous node that flowered three brilliant scarlet petals. It brushed off two hands on a bryst that it wore and walked closer, accompanied by a red-haired woman who displayed the same features as the speakparts.
As the figures came into view, Fragile’s pulse quickened and his head lolled. His knees buckled and Wander’s hand reached under his arm, catching him before he fell.
He looked up at her. “I d-don’t believe it,” he said. “My eyes must be shut!”
“It is an enemy,” she said. “Your eyes are open.”
His knees still shook, but he could stand on them again. She released him slowly.
A voice shot out from the creature’s place, with no mouth to give it. “Are you well?” it asked in Sprak.
Wander did not reply, and Huksa frowned.
“Delight,” the creature called to the nivman, “who are these strangers?”
Huksa’s eyes widened. “I do not know their names,” he said. “But they seemed afraid. They are visitors, delight.”
“Then they can visit with us!”
The creature and the woman arrived at their spot. It was short, and its one-eyed bulb hung below all the other members of the assembly except Fragile. Its eyes swivelled between Fragile and Wander and fixed on the Sixbraid, who stepped an inch behind Wander to avoid its gaze.
“I was sad,” the creature said, “the day I discovered I was strange to the born. I think they wanted to me to have been always known. That would be wonderful.”
The words were Goalish, and Fragile detached himself slightly from Wander’s figure in sheepish awe.
The woman at the creature’s side stepped forward. “I am Allevery,” she said in Sprak. “Uff is too good to ask. What do you want?”
“To move,” Wander said. “And now that we are here, to fight this one.”
Allevery searched Wander’s gaze. She nodded to Fragile, who looked away. “He wants to fight?”
“He is a Goal.”
Allevery glared at her, and she remained silent.
“You look thirsty,” the creature Uff said at last. “Before this fight, would you drink with me?”
-
With Uff, Allevery and Huksa, they moved to the back of the foundations.
“E-eldm – eld.” Fragile peeped. Uff’s bulb creaked and cracked as it turned to him. “You know our words?”
Uff’s petals shivered and shook as they watched Fragile search for a correct appellate. “I am not older or younger than the waters, hillfaced one,” they said. “It is a tie that brings still to speak the words of a visitor. Water pairs best in a still place.”
Uff looked to Wander. “While I am keeping you,” Uff said, “I can water the strong ones.” They pointed one hand at each hoof. “Do you refuse?”
“The water here is foul,” Wander said. “I see no source for it. What kind would you use?”
“I am the one at pairing waters,” Uff said. “They are my concern. Water finds me, and I it in you.”
She let the hands draw away the stronghoof, but the stonehoof would not be lead from where it watched their group. It retreated, reared and exploded at the corralling arms. “I cannot speak to her, eld,” Fragile babbled. “She is kind. She does not like to be tied. Can she not stay?”
Uff’s eye glittered. “I would shake otherwise,” he said. “To adore is governing.” Their hands ceased to wrest and tug at it, and it wandered where it pleased.
In view had always been an open thatch building with twin pillars, and it was only now that it entered definition. It was surrounded by beds of flowers that bloomed despite the cold. A carved stone figure stood in its center, inscribed with Rootcliff writing. Dark pools of moist soil bubbled and coned around it, ejecting steam.
Uff sat down on a thick mat of hoofshair beneath the building’s roof, which entertained many of them. Their hands picked up a brassy pitcher and cups seated in the middle, and poured out its contents into one for each of the foreigners.
“I wish that you would drink,” Uff said in Goalish. “The born have such journeys.”
They sat down, and each took a cup of milksit in their hands. Fragile looked into its frothy, pungent foam, and then up at Wander.
She drank a gulp from her own. “Wait a moment,” she told him.
Uff’s gaze fixed on her. They trailed over her face and posture and could find nothing, and his petals flittered.
“You look on me, your holding place, as a wind-filled one,” he said. He leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee. “What is the fire which courses through your heart?”
“I know the call of pairing waters,” Wander said. “It is one of Roots and Cliffs. Its name too was Uff. Producer of Producing.”
“You followers are of Roots and Cliffs,” Uff said. “What else could I be?”
“I am from the sun.” Wander nodded her head at Fragile. “He is from this place. The Rootcliff ones no longer rule it, and were never in it.”
“It is of Roots and Cliffs. Farther to the sun, there are Roots and Cliffs. The noises you make are new, so I found them out. The rulers they have are more, but their style has not changed. There were pairing waters here, as one can see in every place, and so am I.”
Wander looked to the speakparts at his side. “I do not know what my commander would say of you.”
One of Uff’s hands stroked beneath his head. “He dislikes your call,” Wander continued, “but he likes Laruns less. I should ask what you have done with these.”
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“What does she say, delight?” Huksa the seller whispered in Sprak. “What does she say of us?”
“Do not look at it,” Uff replied. “She is one who does not know.”
Fragile tapped Wander on the shoulder and held up his cup. She nodded.
He took a tentative sip, and his entire body was thrown into convulsions as his throat drew it down into his stomach. He jitteringly set the cup down. “Have you changed these men, eld?” he squeaked.
Uff looked to Fragile. “’Changed them’?” Uff echoed. “It is certain that I have. Waters paired are changed, it is right. This change is without problems, and strikes in and out of all. It is my own, for it was founded in my eye, but it reaches for every one, like you and she. I think in yours that it overflows.”
Fragile looked at Huksa and Allevery. Allevery glared back at the prod of Fragile’s eyes, while Huksa smiled at him. The Larun had an ashy, sweating brow, and like his kin, wore his beard unkempt in the approved way, which would hew it close to the flesh. “I cannot hear it, eld. But your friends… they seem…”
“They all shook at me, once.” Uff’s eye shut, and they grasped hard the hand of Huksa, who leaned on Uff. “Theirs is a hurting and destroying work. There are better ways for them to find it, but this is a better one than that. What I do for them is what I have done always for your set, since the first sign of the first sunrise.”
“We do not want to go,” Huksa said in Sprak.
Wander turned to him. “I believed you couldn’t speak Goalish.”
“I cannot,” he said. “I can hear a little. Too much. We are glad to be with Uff. We have found everything we were looking for, and it is in each other. To leave it would destroy me.”
Wander furrowed her brow at him. “What will you do with them?” she asked Uff.
They blinked and shook their head. “Morning star, this doing is done. Mine is a set of pairing waters, and these are paired, the ones you see. They will not forsake it for parts or anger. We make a good place of each other.” Uff threw a cluster of hands out to the foundations they had laid. “If I have an aim now, it is to build a house from it, so that they make keep out of the rain.”
“You speak of pairing,” she said. “But I do not see it here – no ordering way for pairing to be.”
“What need has a pair of an ‘ordering way’?”
“They engage constantly, and with no measurement, the shaking works of sun. But I suppose this is your design.”
Uff’s petals quivered. “Tell me what is liked, morning star, and I will be able to speak of it.”
She rubbed her chin. “What is liked – it is still, as you said. That brings He’s preference. But in this affair, it is not a touch or holding which is preferred by He. Although there is some dancing.”
She took a drink of milksit. “This thing, the sun between breathers, in this spit-making way, sits at the highest point we know. It is found in a word, and born of our shapes. But this sun we make is not grabbed from one another. That is a scattering agent, and it throws us into turmoil. It sends out the still we seek. The point He has made us to adore is this serenity. He has encompassed, in our pairing, the end of hungers. What sits in that has the least need of a look or touch, which we cannot avoid. When we are entered into his rule, all else will be discarded. The dismay of your like will be extinguished, and we will have again what our producers sent us.” She spent a moment in silence before her gaze fell back on Uff.
“How do you imagine to find one another?” they asked. “Without a look or touch?”
“He guides us.”
“How?”
“With his word.”
“So you move in the way he says – and it is brought to you?”
Wander cocked her head at Uff, and it was a moment before she replied. “Yes. The word is known. The touch is done. To see it is to bring it forward.”
“I see it. What about you, riverborn?”
He shrank back when he was addressed and wiped his eyes. “Me, eld?”
Uff rubbed a space beneath their head and turned to Fragile. “What is your telling, of this break and wash of waters? I have heard the one of Allevery, the one of Huksa, and the one of this star. All were very different words. I wish you would give yours to me.”
Fragile gripped and ungripped his breeches. “I-I have nothing to give, eld,” he said. “I have read no words at all.”
“Neither have I,” Uff said. “I have seen some shapes on papers, and been told that those were words. But I have not gained their way. Even if yours is in like, it would bring me joy to find two of one voice. I have never seen it.”
Fragile clenched his knees and looked up at Wander. Her gaze was full of searching.
“I-” he stuttered, “I believe there is something best about it. If I know the thing you speak. I believe I do. It is like something others want. Like you want another to occupy you. And to say words by that. Words about one another. It is something I have felt. It t-tugs like water. I see it in Wander’s word. B-but…”
“But?”
The four others looked at him. A series of mixtures and sensation assumed new shapes in his mind, invoking things past.
“N-nothing.” He clenched his jaw. “I have seen so little, eldman. That is all I know.”
Uff watched him carefully. Upon his answers, they did not shift from the body but instead their eye bulged and retracted. Their petals shook. “I should like you to stay here tonight,” Uff said.
Wander’s gaze remained captured by Fragile for a moment, before her mind was turned by the proposal. “What does it give you?” she asked Uff.
“Nothing. It is its own offering. You may keep in my own chamber, where room is plenty, and there is no cold. There, you can decide whether you wish to fight me, and rest for it, as I see you have travelled far. In the morning, we will be refreshed, and I will accommodate whatever choice you have.”
She looked hard at Uff and the Laruns, curling her fingers on the edge of the short blade. Her stomach had not rumbled with any trick or poison, and neither had Fragile’s.
“What chamber?”
-
The camp was embraced by night and Wander and Fragile were directed to a golden tent by Allevery, who carried fire. Uff’s chamber spun itself out of light at the edge of the water-scars.
Allevery gestured at a fold in the tent, over which ran a column of bright gold, but did not provide any definition of the space inside. “Lie down in here, if you want,” she said in Sprak. “You can produce if you wish. We will hear nothing of you. Are you hungry?”
Wander gazed at her. “We are hungry.”
“Then I will char meat now. And again at dawn.”
Allevery did not leave at once, but continued to address Wander, who gloomed down at her. “Yes?”
“Uff does not need you.”
Wander did not respond. Allevery adjusted her grip on the fire.
“Uff has friends now,” she continued. “Uff doesn’t need any more pain.”
“It has done something to you.”
“Uff did not change me,” Allevery said. “They changed Bright and the others. Not me.”
Wander did not recognize the name. Her hand, which had been circling her short blade, halted. “Do you know why?”
Allevery’s gaze flickered. “I might,” she said. “The touch- it doesn’t interest me. But Uff interests me.” Her grip tightened. “Uff is good. They want to do something good. So you’ll lie down and leave, if you want to do the same.”
She turned to go. “You should watch the opening. When I went in, I fell.”
Allevery departed, back towards the flames and circles of the Laruns. She did not trip or stumble.
-
Wander held open the tent’s opening for Fragile, and they melted inside. The light of the tent engulfed them, and when it happened, the sight and steps of Fragile disappeared from Wander’s view, along with that of the others outside. Her eyes shrunk and sought out fire, but sweatsight availed her nothing. It was soon frustrated when the light returned, and she discovered she had been turned to the planting fields of Shamarkat.
Teeming flocks of marked laborers ran among burning acres of dripping green crops. They used ropes to tear apart Freemen, and scalped them with knives and drowned them in oil. The house of the planter was burning, and she looked to the horizon too and saw the pole of the planters turning the sky black. But the one house is taller than them all, all the people and carts that go to and from it and it stood high above her head. The distance of its most steepled heights fuzzed up detail when she tried to take it, but she could take smoke. There was smoke everywhere, and black and the fire that carried it in its pillars and walls and viewlets. It raged against the towers and beat them, sloshed through every hole and into the paddies, and it belched out great roars that mixed up and carried the screams of happiness and jubilation of the Tjeni.
The house cracked apart at the base and a body crashed to the ground, striking its belly. When its death was obvious, she turned away from it, and saw another one. She felt fingers slip into her hand. The noise and sight emptied, and it gave her quiet too.
The white of the world was gone. It resolved into the green-gold flushes of a tented cloister. She was still standing, and Fragile was collapsed on the floor. He was breathing quickly, and his eyes were open. Her gaze hardened.
Wander crouched down to his spot.
“I-” Fragile shook his eyes and blinked. “I saw… where am I? Where is-?!”
He looked up at Wander, and a jolt took him over which threw him back.
“Be still,” she said.
His iris wasn’t settling, as she had observed it did whenever he would look at her, and her brow began to furrow before it did at last. “Yes,” he said. “I just- I saw something.”
“Me too,” she said. “Do you want to go?”
“N-no,” he shivered.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “It wasn’t bad. And this…” He waved his hand through the air. “This is… it is warm.”
Wander flexed her hand in the air and looked around. She could find no flame illuminating the tent or giving it heat, but there was a substantial amount of both.
“I have not felt it in so long,” Fragile said. “Is it yours?”
“Not all of it. If you are pleased, we can stay.”
He nodded, and so they did.
-
Wander and Fragile relieved themselves of their equipment, depositing it on a long blanketed cushion that took up a quarter of the chamber. They acquainted themselves with the rest of it, regarding its sculptures, devices, and all the changes taking place. A broad diamond-shaped platform on its far side had been committed to three clay figures, whose cheeks, hips and calves had been enlarged. They had been struck out from hands and stone, and Wander did not know their aim. Set oblique to the statues was a large shaft of fluttering metal suspended from the ceiling; when Fragile went to touch it, the hairs on his head stood up, and he retreated to the cushion. There was a section of the tent in which droplets of rain poured down from an unseen source, into a tub of planks which never overflowed. The ceiling itself appeared transparent, showing stars in the night sky that twinkled.
“You’ve been quiet,” Wander told Fragile.
He looked up at her and blushed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Are you upset?”
He cocked his head at her. “Upset?”
She discarded the statue she was observing and sat down on a seat by it. “You are injured by their state,” she said, “and the state of their like. I am not.”
The silence then, and Fragile. “They are helping something that makes us cry,” he said. “It cuts us apart. It burns us… If they are in trouble, it does injure. But I do not know that they are. And I do not know if it is right that I take it – the injury.” He looked at his statuette. “Not when they hurt so much…”
“It is.”
He looked at Wander.
“It is right,” she said.
“I did not know- well, you did not say it before.”
She extracted her short blade from her hip, along with its sheath. “I am a blade,” she said, gripping it in the light. “I must cut, so nothing must cut me. You are not one. Your face cuts nothing.” She unsheathed it and felt its point. “I don’t know what will happen to them. and I do not like you to be in pain. But that you take it – that you always have – that has always been a good.” She scrunched up her brow after the thought left her mouth, and her eyes drifted from him. The blade dropped between her legs.
“I-” He stuttered and shut his eyes. "T-then – I will take it.”
They listened to the water burble.
“Why would you not give your sight to it?” she asked. “Uff.”
He blushed. “I did not want to go against you,” he said.
“Your position went against mine?”
He nodded. “I know less than you. My words – If I said them, you would change them, and make them good.”
“Then let me do it.”
He took a light breath. “The touch you spoke of,” he said. “I mean… I do not think… yours- it has never angered me.”
Wander regarded, for a moment, his legs. “I did not speak of anger,” she said.
“You didn’t?”
“I spoke of sun. Our sun is different. It does not itself produce anger.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It is between hearts,” she said. “It is our power. There is a sun between friends; a sun between a child and a child’s maker; a sun between grown ones, which makes spits. Ours is the first. All are warm, but only the third afflicts.”
“How does it do that?”
“Its touch throws out yourself,” she said, “and puts into commotion your I. This helps the work of brightplague.”
Fragile’s brow eased. “Can a sun change?” he asked.
“Yes. Friends can be joined with words. Then, it is changed.”
She watched his face and brow twist and contort. “Didn’t the Sixbraids have like?” she asked.
“I… I don’t know what that means, either.”
Wander itched her scalp. She brushed away the flecks of residue from the crown of it and set aside her hairpiece, exposing her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It isn’t bad.” She picked at her hair. “In Shaminkat, and in Shamarkat, and in Larunkat, and Ard Makaris – when a man wanted the change to happen, they would pick a day, and say words then. That would make them joined. There’d be a party then, or offerings. Eating and drinking. Can you recall anything like that?”
“I cannot.”
“What about the gift?”
He cocked his head. “Gift?”
She pried his birthman's seashell necklace out from her belt and dangled it at him.
“Ih,” he whispered. The more he saw it the more he began to shake, so she put it back away.
“Gifts are exchanged,” she said. “In many places it is done. That’s what you said about it.”
“It was a gift. It was done during two-season. I believe it was from that.”
She rubbed her hands. “And what is two-season?”
“You do not know?”
She shook her head. He curled his lip. “I do not know either.”
“Why not?”
“The Laruns forbid it. It happened last before the Response.”
His eyes flickered uncertainly. She looked into his eyes for understanding and found tears.
“You can leave it alone,” Wander said. She set her hair aside. “Leave it alone. The sun is of what we speak. A touch is how sun is made, but it is not the sun itself. Sun is best in which spit is made, and which bears the still of a child and the child’s maker. That is what is written, what He has said. The touch, in this spot, undoes the peace, and must be checked and fought against.”
Fragile rubbed his fingers. “I see it.”
She watched him bite his lip. “Is it clear?”
He unbit his lip and fixed his hands to his lap. “Ih. I was just… does a feeling touch?”
“What do you mean?”
“To know it,” he said. “The still. To know that someone feels a way about you.”
“That is a piece which the I contains.”
“But it moves us,” he said. “Doesn’t it? It is best. It moves us really.” His eyes flickered again. “I- I believe it moves me.”
“It does.”
“Yes.”
She was silent. He could not see what was happening inside her. After some time her look shifted and glazed over.
“Will you help the Laruns?” he asked quietly.
“If you want me to.”
“You know what is best,” he said. “I like the things you do. And…”
He pushed together his forefingers. “I believe… if I did ask… you would destroy them.”
“Uff?”
He nodded. “Is that something you fear?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He scrunched his shoulders together. His gaze was carried off into melancholy. “Uff does not seem angry, or like they want to hurt another. I do not know if they see what they are doing. I do not know if I see it...”
“Uff is brightplague,” Wander replied. “An old figure the Rootcliffs offered to. It is its whole shape; it has not only been changed as the Unders were. It feigns ignorance of things all know. You should not take its word.”
“What is brightplague?” Fragile asked.
“It does wrong. It fights He and his Family.”
Without his meaning, Fragile’s head turned slightly, his brow raised, and his mouth opened. He changed it rapidly, and remained quiet, but Wander took notice.
“Why do you ask?” she pressed.
He scrunched up his face. “Is a Larun brightplague?”
“It produced their project. It is the rule they follow.”
“Why would Uff hurt them?”
“It is like you say. Perhaps it has not. Perhaps it believes that it has not.”
“But we have seen them shook. They are not frowning, but – they are pierced. It seems like – their project – Uff has gone and hurt it.”
“Then they may be arranged in a wrong way. There could be some fight between them.”
“Is it something you know?”
“No.”
He blinked.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He looked down and pushed together his thumbs. His eyes were drooping, and his neck muscles strained to hold up his head. “It is all very strange to me.”
He grasped the cushion that he was lodged against and cuddled with it. A warmth spread throughout Wander’s chest, bringing down a pressure she had not realized was there. “You should shut your eyes,” she said. “The woman should be bringing meat. I’ll raise you up if she does.”
She got up and went to the tentflap, where the night was now visible. “Wander…”
She heard him murmur and stopped. “Yes, Fragile?”
“The- the injury-” He mumbled, stopping and starting. “That it doesn’t hurt you- I- I think… it is also good.”
Something tugged at her cheek. “You should shut your eyes.”
He already had.
-
Uff watched the foreigners walk past the threshold of their home. The little one’s Stonehoof hid, and once they had moved in, embedded itself by the entrance.
The sun set and the nivmen set down fire in the bowls of the house Uff built. Their friends gathered, drinking merriment and one another, and caroused in dancing squares and upon beds of grass.
Huksa watched as Uff lit from the place beside him and exited the house, disappearing into the dark, toward the animal fires.
Uff found their way to the pack of hoofs the Laruns had brought, which were guarded by a lonely sentry.
“Please go out,” Uff told the soldier, “and eat well. Tonight, I will look at them.”
He moved away, and Uff moved among the ranks of resting strong ones. Each individual matched Uff’s height, even curled up as they were with legs and heads bent towards the ground. Uff declined, sitting before the foreigner that had been set among their number.
The Stronghoof blinked open its eyes in the way of Uff. It flicked its tongue at a spot on its chin and did not speak to the sight before it, exploding with petals and appenda and estimations of hand. One of these crept forward and itched the stronghoof’s neck.
“You have travelled many roads,” Uff said, “haven’t you, son of breath?”
Its eyelids drooped. The Stronghoof laid its head on the ground.
“He doesn’t want you.”
A whisper slithered out from inside The Stronghoof’s bags.
“A voice?” Uff whispered. “A voice with wrong words?”
Coils of rope rose out of a pouch. They hung in the air and drifted over to Uff, trailing their ends through the snow, twisting themselves in quarters and binds and hitches to the roots and rocks and snow.
“Everyone should want this one,” the Bell said, “and he should not be hurt with your chatter or another’s. He does not have a way to take it. So speak to me, if you must speak at all, dry-crafted thing.”
Uff’s eye widened at this phenomenon. “Speak to who?”
“I am the Bell: a hand of two stars.”
They sat down again. The Bell descended to his level.
Uff put up their knee and their hands inched at her and swirled around, tugging her stripes and coils. Their eye moved closer. “A bell without chimes,” they murmured. “What a wind-covered work!”
“You are a kind of pairing waters,” she said.
“It is so, wind-filled one.”
“Show it to me.”
Their eye shimmered. “Show it?”
“I have your words, given me by my star,” she continued. “But I do not hear them. For they appear as my own, and that must be wrong – you and I are not of one country.”
The color of Uff’s petals shifted and fluttered. “How do you know?”
“I have known it since I was born.”
“So have I,” Uff said. “I was produced by a star that fell on this place, which is called Possessed. I can see it. I can feel the ice of it in my hands. Stars are like snow, you see; that is why they fall. But…”
Some of Uff’s hands fell to the ground and touched the white. “I had a kind, once. I must have had them, too. I can see them too, and our parties together. And good days. But I cannot hear them now. I cannot speak them as I once would. I do not know what happened. It is as though I was not created, and that what I am is some trick, some saying that I must be.”
They looked to The Bell.
“So you are a kind of my waters,” she said.
“I am?”
She flicked aside the snow with her tendrils. “We can know, if you will show it to me now.”
Uff’s petals crooked, and their head tilted.
“We are not of one country,” she repeated. “Show me how our joint begins. Show me how it is the waters pair.”
Uff’s hands shivered and grasped at the dirt. “On this,” they said, “I do not know, wind-filled one.” Uff looked around at the trees, which bent toward them from the black. “I will show what I can, even though there is not much I can give. I do not know what is this place.”
“This place is Goal.”
“I mean a different word,” Uff said. “The names are all a wash, but where there were once giant ones, richly built and joined, now there are little breathers. These I have found, who are from others, and look a way I haven’t seen, carry little of what I make; some new work and some new pain has caught them. Their heads are filled with tables and shapes made with dark water. Their bodies are locked in something large, and it is moving more quickly than I can see. They have so much more to fear.”
The Bell crept closer. Her strands traced up and down Uff’s silhouette. Uff laid on their back. “Once – I was the country of steady speakers. I was the place they were. But now, I cannot even see their marks. These shadows are unlike me, and I fear what they might reveal. Water is what I pair; that is the only steady part now. Everything else is air.”
The Bell writhed. “Your frown,” she said, “is an unlikely thing. And it has no good cause.”
“Show that to me.”
“The star has cut apart your like. You shining ones. All had words. All those were certain of what they were. So you must have some piece more than they. Is that not way enough for smiling?”
Uff’s hands shivered. “What else do you know, set of my set?”
“I know Am. I know the Joyous One. I know what is said about her. I know sayings – the breathers’ noises, the swirl and pushing of it, and I can make them. So I know something limitless.”
Two of Uff’s hands came around and scratched beneath his head. “And from who have you come? What is your aim with her, this morning star? How did she earn such a right companion?”
“I am Am’s. And I am He’s, who is the star’s. But the aims I have are for the star herself.”
“It seems an emptiness.”
The Bell’s length bristled. “And is your way so full?” she asked. “I have something high. Since she was little and weak, I have kept her. I have found her a high thing of her own. Perhaps it is I who should be charged with your position, One at Mixed Drinks!”
Uff laughed, and the threading of The Bell chuckled. Uff’s eye shut and their petals quivered.
“Your star, too, is of new work,” Uff said. “The kind I fear.”
“She is in the fire and told by men, if that is what you mean.”
“How can you bear it,” they asked, “if she enjoys you so?”
“I cannot.”
Uff turned their head to one of The Bell’s strands, which twisted at him.
“Every breath she ends is a curse. She was never quick to it, but that will only have me cry for her, rather than shake. It is true,” she said.
“Then, if you could bring her hands out of it, and take them to joy yourself, would you not do it?”
“No.”
Uff blinked. “Why not?”
“Because she would shake at me,” she said, “and I do not want that.”
“You have no higher design?”
“What design is higher?” The Bell twisted around his shoulder. “The joyous one knows things I do not. I know things the joyous one does not. To shape her mouth would hurt me, as it gives me my own way.”
They turned back to the sky.
-
When Fragile again awoke, the world did not appear to have shifted from night to day. The tent permitted nothing inside, and even at its entrance, where light jost around its edges, no ray penetrated it. Wander sat on her bed with her arms crossed and her eyes cast upward; they did not shift to his so quickly. A gust shocked the tentflap and both turned to the shadow that had been cast there.
“Uff has asked for you,” Allevery said. She carried a wooden board loaded with bread, milksit, and yellow produce. “I could not cook for you until now. Uff has been busy. Please come out soon.”
She laid down the board and exited the tent.
The two of them ate. Fragile hitched on his instrument and bag and Wander strapped on her weapons. She threw open the chamber’s covering and they were met by the whole body of Uff’s community.
All the speakparts and soldiers both had assembled in a bristling ring around the opening, and around the figure of Uff itself. That stood at the center of the space, accompanied only by Huksa, who was shivering and whose eyes watered. Allevery was nowhere to be seen.
“Did you eat well?” Uff asked.
Wander said nothing. Fragile nervously glanced at her. “Y-yes, eld,” he whispered. “T-thank you.”
“I hoped you would. Your smile is mine.”
Fragile’s eyes dashed about the assembly, trying to discern the aim of their resentment. He tugged at his coldover and moved closer to Wander, who rested a hand on her shortblade. Uff’s hands stroked their chin as their eye shivered and goggled her.
“I would be afraid, if I were given a display like this,” Uff said. “So I will show it to you. I have replaced my position.”
A loud sob escaped Huksa. “Uff means to abandon us!” one Larun shouted at them.
“Uff wants to put us where we started.”
“Uff wants to leave us because of you!”
“Decease this rattling!”
Uff stood up, and a shout came from him that chattered the teeth and cut the air. “I go in my way, and for no other. None of you have eyes to see.”
The grumbling of Laruns subsided.
Uff laid a hand on the shoulder of Huksa, whose tears diminished. He looked back at Wander and Fragile. “I will see if you have something for me. If you do, I will release this set to their own.”
Fragile’s mouth opened. Uff raised a finger. “Do not think of this as outside I, little rivershape. Water’s pairing travels all, and I will have my price.”
“You have not named it,” Wander said.
“It is nothing hidden. I would like your word, and a piece. Nothing else.”
“We have many words, eld,” Fragile babbled. “Please, tell us, and they will be spoken!”
Uff opened wide his hands. “The word that will return them, Sixbraid yonman, is your own. One of yours. I will have your profession, that you will bring about a pairing of waters overmeasure the one seen here. It will be done before the speaker’s ending. Or I will return, and I will put a punishment on the other.”
“And the piece?” Wander asked.
Uff’s eye shimmered. “It is an easy thing. Among yourselves are the parts that join and dissolve.”
His hands reached out and caressed Wander’s short blade, her blaith, Fragile’s three-string, and his hoofskin bag. “Hand one of these to me which does both; if you say it and give it, then I will disappear, and I will only remain hidden from you forever.”
Fragile took out his three-string. The wood pressed itself on his eyes, as did its carvings. He knew now that they would never get through to him. Its strings, which had played with him to the people of Partplant, made no protest. And its neck, which he had embraced in the days of searching, and when there was nothing left of old, did not reach for him. He did not want to move it, but did not know its words. So he held it out to Uff.
“I think this will prefer your piece, eld,” he said. “It has brought me others. It… it is a thing of pairing waters. I do not know that it should do much else for mine.”
Uff’s hands snapped out and curled around the three-string, pulling it back and caressing Fragile’s face and fingers. Their head did not turn to look at it as they felt it over.
“I would offer many sacred sighs for such a gift,” Uff said. “But it is only a part of my need. From my watch, you have nothing at all for the cut, little one. Even your cane, which has broken nothing, is broken more by the thing it cuts.”
Fragile’s eyes watered as the three-string began to return to him. “B-but-” he stuttered. “If it is not enough- won’t you-?”
“Take mine.”
Wander’s short blade flung out and lanced the ground at the feet of Uff. His arms halted, and a second school of them swirled around the weapon, plucked it out of the ground, and approached Wander herself.
“Morning star,” Uff exclaimed, “What is this giving? At what new place have you arrived?”
“I have discarded much you enjoy with the cut of this,” Wander said. “With this and the other, your piece is given.”
Uff ran three fingers over the tip of the blade. “If you will do it, both of you will need to take my words. And both of you will be held to its finish.”
“You have already associated us in failure,” she said. “What have we to lose in gathering?” She looked at Fragile, who emerged from his shock with a nodding. The two of them recited the Rootcliff incantation.
Uff expelled a chorus of chuckles, and they placed the short blade in their bryst. “I can see why she enjoys you so,” they said. “I hope you take the man, joyous one. I hope that you find the sun you seek.”
They turned to the Laruns, whose eyes held on Uff with mournful acclaim. Hands exploded out from Uff’s body and ran among their number, touching each of them. The light of the world dimmed, and the stars were covered up. Many of them broke down and wept as the absence was revealed. When he was gone, lightning split the sky, and it began to rain.
-
“I’m s-sorry,” Huksa mumbled. He scoured the tears from his face and lip with her cloth. Wander did not reply; she took back the insignia when he was done and handed him a waterskin.
The rain turned to snow. Sheltered by the remains of Uff’s house, Fragile and Wander addressed the inconsolable nivman, who yet recovered himself as the other speakparts and soldiers recouped their senses and dragged what wagons they could out from the freezing muck. Huksa drank deeply from the skin, throwing his head back and shutting his eyes. The tells of choke came from it; coarse air were chucked from his nose and throat, but his eyes grew smaller and less haggard the greater his suckling. He released the skin and his lips hung open in an expired daze.
“Firstpoint Huksa-” Fragile struggled out some Sprak, shocking the Larun from his reverie. “Much pain?”
Huksa looked down. “My name is not Huksa. It is Bright.” He held a hand to his face. “There is pain,” he said. “There is great pain, but Uff did not give it to me. It is okay. I am not glad, but I believe I am helped – to be brought out from him.”
Fragile looked up at Wander.
“He’s well,” she said. “He thanks you.”
Bright handed the skin back to Wander and she fixed it to her belt. “Where is Allevery?” he asked. “Has she spoken with you?”
“I haven’t seen her since this morning,” she replied. “I don’t know where she is.”
Bright fidgeted. “Goodpoint Allevery…” He shook his head. “She is the reason we still have breath. Did she tell you that?”
Wander crossed her arms. “No.”
“Uff was scared of us, and we fought. She stayed their hand.” He wiped his brow, displacing a trail of filth and sweat from it. “I hope that she is well.”
“Where will you go now?”
His cheeks sagged. “I’m not sure.”
Wander looked at the overturned wagons being scavenged by the nivmen and pulled up from the water. “You do not have the parts to move forward,” she said.
“We do not.” He rubbed his mouth. “Our first aim was Partplant. I may return South. I will try to make them hear me, and say of what has happened.”
“Did you come from Herdetopp?”
“From Spot of Rocks,” he said, “but it is on that road. Is that where you two are going?”
She nodded.
“We last took water at Firmen Couth,” he said. “Will you-” He swallowed and cradled his hands. “Will you come back with us? With the word of a Blade, we could-”
“I am not a Blade or Seen.”
The color drained from Bright’s face. He looked between her and Fragile. “Then- you-”
“We are making our way,” she said. “That is all.”
Bright relaxed slightly. “I still wish you would follow us,” he said. “Even without that mark. I will share all I have, and I will make others do it. You have brought us still.” He shivered. “I wish we could keep it so.”
She looked at her feurkun and relayed the thought to him. He replied in Goalish.
“Until the Couth,” she answered.
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The nivmen and speakparts assembled and took what wagons remained and moved South. The day was bright and marked by gray maws of colossus that hung before them, washing around a spooling, wind-smacked megalith that swung into the air where the sky could freeze it. They took out their weapons and chopped a path through the bushes, clearing the way for the hoofs and their cargo.
Wander and Fragile moved alongside the column, accompanied by the stronghoof. The stonehoof followed from a distance. Fragile rubbed his hand and bit his lip, but Wander said nothing.
“Why did you give up your cane?” he asked lightly.
“It was my smaller one,” she said. “But I would have given up my blaith, if it was needed.”
His eyes bubbled round. “You would’ve?”
She shut her eyes and nodded once.
“I can’t believe they changed your aim.”
“They may not have, had Uff not desisted.”
“But they did!” Fragile chirped.
“Yes,” she said. She could no longer thumb her blade, so she rubbed its empty covering. “They did.” She directed her voice to The Stronghoof’s saddlebags. “I ask how it happened.”
The Bell’s rope poked up from a flap and swam up The Stronghoof’s head. “It was me,” she said. “I changed Uff’s way.”
Wander frowned. Fragile looked back at The Bell. “You did it, eld? How was it done?”
“We made a sun, yon,” The Bell said. “I knew Ourland was full of lost ones. I believe we found one, even if it was a burning-thing.”
They walked on.
“What did you see?” Fragile asked Wander. “That changed your own way?”
“That there is much I do not know.” She scratched her head again. “I wonder if we move so much, or if we are not pushed by wind. This wind, they speak of. You and I are on a path, and that path has lines. Perhaps Uff has gone from them; perhaps, one day, they should also walk our way.”
Fragile rubbed his arm. “Do you believe we can keep this promise?”
“I believe so,” Wander said. “We have your face to bring them, and mine to make them still; our only fear is that we might drown ourselves in such teeming waters.”
He giggled. The slight pull she felt made its bite at Wander’s cheek, and fell back. She slipped a hand into the fold of her vest.
Something light pressed itself on to her shoulder, and broke away suddenly. She looked to Fragile, who was staring forward. “What was that?” she asked.
“My smile.” He rubbed his arm and blinked quickly. “Y-you wanted them? Should I- I should not have-”
“I see it.” Something pulled more insistently at Wander’s cheek. She reached out an arm and squeezed his far shoulder.
Fragile’s mouth broke apart. After a moment’s hesitation, he put his hands behind his back, stood up on his toes, and pressed on her shoulder again.